Bexlie
by JennRD
Summary: A journey into the world of a tortured child...hell bent on revenge, who strings poor Rimmer along like a toy dog. (All characters belong to Grant Naylor, exc. Bexlie herself) Please RR...I'm crap so I need guidance!
1. Default Chapter

Author: Well... helloooo there guys! I'm Jenn, Scottish, 15 years old and from what you could probably tell from this small escapade, a really crap writer!  
  
Note: I'm in love with the wonderful Chris Barrie, who plays the gorgeously unconventional sex-god Arnold Judas Rimmer BSc SSc!  
  
Lol... So here goes. My first fanfic. *deep breath and prepare yourselves to bored stupid..*  
  
***  
Chapter 1  
  
"Auurrggghhhccchh...HACK!...Phweeeee...."  
  
"ARGH!" Rimmer couldn't take it any more. His bunkmate and his curry- clogged windpipe had been poisoning the air for too long. Not only did his breath stink like a manure-covered hobo whom had just farted in a field of putrid cauliflower...but the noise...  
  
"The NOISE!!" Rimmer thrust his pillow across his face.  
  
"Rimmmmeh...!" Lister snorted.  
  
"What is it you Vindaloo-sucking pillock?!"  
  
"Rimmmmmmeh!!!" He snorted again. "Rimmmmeh!! BEHIND YOU!"  
  
"ARGH!!" Rimmer squawked. He jumped so much he hit the top of his bunk...then the floor.  
  
"SNORT! Aaugh....phweeee....." Lister was still mid-dream...  
  
Rimmer brushed his shirt off - then his trousers. As he finished wiping himself down, he glared at his hands to find them covered in a yellowy- orange substance. He sniffed it.  
  
"No no no no NO!!!"  
  
"Wha...? What? Eh?! Who...?" He woke Lister up. "HEY! What's yer problem? I can't sleep for all the noise!" He rubbed his alcohol-induced eye-bags and forced himself down the bunk ladder and onto the floor...where he had left his Spicy Chicken and extra-Tobasco Vindaloo the night before, when he drank more than the Ship's volume in Tennent's. Only, his intended breakfast of old curry and flat lager had acquired an extra ingredient -  
  
"You Muck-digesting-pony-tailed-smegging-smegheaded-smeg!!!!" Second Technician Arnold Rimmer's roars rang through space like an attack of Titinus. He stood glaring at Lister's shocked expression.  
  
Rimmer spun slowly to exhibit his curry spattered trouser leg. Lister's shocked expression dissolved to a smirk. - Then to fits of laughter.  
  
"Ow...." he groaned as his head reminded him he was mid-hangover. He grabbed his forehead, rubbed his temples, then grinned again...  
  
"Here Arn...I was gonna ask you to warm my breakfast up for me...but I guess your arse has already done that for me...Lucky you were on Hard Light, eh?!" He sniggered as he made his way out the door, to the bar-deck to make himself a 'Hair-Of-The-Dog'. (Ten pints before lunchtime usually cured his hangovers.)  
  
"Yesss...Lucky....Hard Light." Arnold hissed after Lister.  
  
"Holly?!"  
  
Holly's head appeared on the room monitor. "Yes Arn?"  
  
"Fresh clothes...nowish!!"  
  
The computer paused and stared around blankly, whistling to "You Can Leave Your Hat On".  
  
"Holly... the thought occurs I am still in curry-stained uniform. The further thought occurs that you seem unable this fine morning to comprehend the fact I'm in a Smegger of a mood and am desperately fighting off the temptation to go round the ship, 'borrow' all of your wiring and garrotte them round Lister's groinal area so tight, it will go black, wrinkle like a prune and drop off. Now kindly give me some fresh holo-clothing you bald headed, neckless git!"  
  
Holly looked up, in slight shock. "neckless? Are you implying I'm fat?! Anyway...you said now-ISH, didn't you?!"  
  
By this time Rimmer had got himself into such a state, his face was turning a nice shade of purple. His hard light-bee was beginning to fizz and spark.  
  
"Cool it Arn," Holly warned. "Your Hard Light will blow. Don't worry...you'll have your clothes in a jiff - "  
  
"Great. And what's a jiff?! Some kind of Jiff-illion years in computer lingo?! Yes. This is fan-smegging-tastic. We're probably the last humans in the WHOLE universe...and our very existence relies on a computer with the brains of a drunken mollusk and a head the shape, texture and colour of a boiled egg that's been dipped in cooking oil. You're nothing but an -"  
  
"Here's your clothes." Holly interrupted before Rimmer began to insult him.  
  
But Rimmer was still wearing his curry-flavoured uniform. He sighed an intellectually-exhausted sigh, as his rage grew ever more powerful...  
  
He glared around the room for a while, attempting to collect his shattered temper, but failing miserably, when BOOM! FIZZZ...SPARK!!! The hard-light main-drive exploded, sending Rimmer hurtling air-borne across the bunkroom, straight into the wall. He screeched as all of a sudden - even more suddenly than being catapulted across the room - he was stretched, pulled, expanded and extended this way and that, each time more forcefully than before...  
  
He yelled for help, using all the strength he could muster, but no-one could help him... Lister wasn't there, the Cat was grooming himself somewhere, Kryten was on down-time on the lower decks and Holly was next to useless, as the explosion had triggered a fault with his links to the holo- drives.  
  
It was times like this, Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSc. SSc. wished he wasn't stranded with three half-wits, and a disembodied head...who happened to be more of a half-wit than the others.  
  
Just as he had got to the point where his Light-Bee was on the brink of destruction, the sparks calmed, the booms hushed, and the expanding and extending subsided. Holly had regained control of the situation. He was on the case again. He was kicking bottom.  
  
"Sorry Arn... been a slight miscalculation with the whole clothes changing there..." He paused. "...lucky you didn't want a haircut, eh?"  
  
Rimmer lay, sprawled on the floor against the wall, trying to regain full- consciousness. "WHAT THE SMEGGING HELL WAS SMEGGING THAT YOU STUPID SMEGGING.... SMEGGING....." Arnold always seemed to struggle with decent put-downs when his head had just been stretched and shredded like putty in a mincing machine.  
  
He turned slightly in his blind (and also quite painful) rage. To his complete and utter derangement, there beside the fuming hologram stood a female... the first any of the crew-members had seen for over three-million years!  
  
"- extremely intelligent, handsome computer..." He exhaled deeply and grinned like a goit as he stood in awe of the female form, who just so happened to be wearing an exact replica of Rimmer's uniform. A flaw in the holo-drive? Holly loosing control? Never... 


	2. The Man in the Lingerie Dept

***  
Chapter 2  
  
"Oh." Holly blushed as he stared at the woman, then at the floor. He felt he ought to explain the situation to the stranger. "I think there might've been, in all possibility, a slight flaw in the holo-drive... Hold on... I'll go fix it - "  
  
"NO!!! I mean - no, you d...d...don't REALLY have to, n..n..n..not RIGHT now, anyway. Bu-bu-buh but how......?"  
  
"How has the ship managed to create and support TWO holograms at the one time? Well... I think it's because - well I'm sure it was caused by - I know how it happened, it was because - (he paused) Well I don't know, do I? All I remember was 'BANG! POP! STRETCH! SKEW!' And Bob's yer Uncle... another Hologram. She was never one of the crew, otherwise, I would've recognised her. She couldn't have come from outer space, 'cos she doesn't look like, you know...something from outer space. She's a hologram, and she was definitely human... - "  
  
"What's goin' down in Space-town guys?" Lister spluttered in the door as he finished his eleventh speed-pint. He was followed closely by The Cat. He noticed both Holly and Rimmer's looks... then followed their line of sight....  
  
"Whoah! What's this guys?" The new figure stood with a friendly, yet slightly petrified smile on her face.  
  
Holly cleared his throat. "I don't know Dave. I'm as bewildered as an elderly man in the lingerie department! Something went wrong - "  
  
"...But was oh-so-very-right." Rimmer gasped, his eyes glued gormlessly to the visitor.  
  
"I think Goal-post head needs wakening up. Anyone else for a nice drawn-out slapping session?!" Smirked the Cat.  
  
The young woman gathered her nerves, delved into her pockets, then brought out and studied a photo she was carrying. She then studied Lister. She opened her neatly lip-lined mouth and gasped; "Dave? Dave...Lister? Is it really you?!" she glided over to him and threw her arms around his neck. "I found you!! I r-really found you!"  
  
"Marvellous! Can we loose him now?" Rimmer had recovered and was ready to spread pessimism and put-downs thoughout the universe again.  
  
The crew was in disbelief. How did a woman they'd never seen nor heard of before know Lister's name? And WHY, of all things to do, would she want to hug him?  
  
Lister was shocked, but relatively calm about it, and hugged her back. She WAS good looking, after all. He grinned at the jealousy ridden Rimmer.  
  
"Right. Hold on. What's with the fascination with the curry-and-lager-booby- trapper? He's a chain-smoking, lager gulping, pony-tailed, chipmunk-faced, manure-breathed horse. He has the morality and moronic vocabulary of a drunken sailor on a stag night in the middle of the month of Arse-bruary. So, in all respect ma'am - What is so special about David Lister?!"  
  
"W-what d-do you mean? He's not a moron." She said rather uptightly. "He's my c-creator!!"  
  
Holly, Rimmer, the Cat and Lister especially were taken aback by her revelation.  
  
"Creator?" The Cat guffawed. "But if you were a droid I would have known from your scent! You smell human to me!" He sneezed. "But then, I have a cold, so I might just be a little off with the old nasals."  
  
Rimmer shook his head. Lister had to sit down. He threw himself down onto Rimmer's army-neat bedsheets. Rimmer shook his head and winced at all the creases reappearing like he hadn't spent the required four hours on making his bed.  
  
Lister felt his temporal lobes pumping like a gazelle on heat. This Lister had gone to art college - He could never in a million years (or should that be three million and twenty-five years?) have created and built a human- like android. He couldn't even build with Lego!  
  
"I don't understand..."  
  
"You don't understand?! Now THERE'S a turn-up for the old book, eh, Listy?" Rimmer retorted, snidely.  
  
"He wasn't talking to you, Captain Smeg-For-Brains," The Cat hissed, enjoying the show he'd been treated to.  
  
Dave wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. Suddenly he encountered a larger headache, and it had nothing to do with his alcohol-intake the night before.  
  
"I just don't understand... how could I have CREATED you?" Lister moaned.  
  
"Why, the g-good, old-fashioned way." She chirped. "Sex!!"  
  
Lister received such a shock; he slammed off the top of Rimmer's bunk, and crashed onto the floor. Or rather, his now fluffy plate of curry. The one with his bunk mate's buttock crevice from earlier.  
  
Rimmer grinned in amusement. "Ahh. Thank YOU Mister Justice!" He saluted the ceiling, then performed a little feet-shuffling, hand waving dance, whilst sniggering. Lister was out-cold.  
  
"Well, Cat, we better move the smegger to the medi-bay," Rimmer sighed eventually.  
  
"I'll meet you there." Holly announced, before zipping to the medical floor.  
  
"C'mon Cat. Don't just stand there looking me up and down. Help me with the curry-muncher...he can't lie around in last nights' Tikka all day."  
  
But that sounded like a forbidden reference to the 'W-word'. The Cat simply stood and stared in bewilderment at Lister's curry-stained lifelessness, then at Rimmer. "You see this suit? This here suit, Laundry Shoot Nostrils, is made of the finest Felinic Velvet and has a 24-carat gold trim, with cubic zirconia -encrusted buttons. This suit takes years off me - not that I need it, but it's always a bonus - and what's more, this very suit, in case you hadn't noticed, is 'Hot Red'. Hell, do you have ANY sense of style or colour?! 'Hot Red' doesn't go with 'Tikka ORANGE'!! I ain't touchin' him, bro!" With that, he defiantly stormed out the door and down the hall to his own quarters. With a shout from the corridor, he added, "And don't expect to see me for a while. There's a mirror down here! See y'all laterssss!!"  
  
'The Arrival' smiled weakly at Rimmer, and held out her hand. "Emm...Hi," she uttered. "The name's B-bexlie." She stuttered occasionally as she spoke.  
  
He recognised that name... "Bexlie?" He thought, but decided against thinking too much for the time being - What if he mucked up the flirting? Disasterous. He politely refused her hand, grinning shyly.  
  
"Sorry, I'm covered in this imbecile's dinner! My name is Arnold J. Rimmer. BSc SSc, Second Technician for Mining Ship Red Dwarf. That thing just there was The Cat, ignore him at all costs. Talking to him can only lower your IQ levels. Kryten, our droid-thing is probably down-level on medi-bay. You'll meet him later. And this sorry-excuse-for-a-Space-Corps-soup-machine- attendant is Lister... as you may well already know. Actually... how DO you may well already know him?"  
  
"There's n-no time for that n-now, Mr R-rimmer - we have to get Dave down to the medical room. He hit himself p-pretty bad - " She twitched meagrely as she spoke, but he let that pass for nerves.  
  
"Don't worry. I'll get him there. And please-"  
  
He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to be 'handsome' but obviously forgetting he had Lister's curry all over his hands.  
  
"- Call me Arn......... Oh NO!!" he wailed as he realised he had newly tikka-ginger hair. "Typ-smeggin'-ical!! As soon as he comes round I'm going to knock his sorry face right back out again!"  
  
Bexlie giggled coyly. "M-maybe we should - get going?" she said, pointing at the still-comatose Lister. "I'm not b-bothered - your suit is beige. G- goes with anything!" She cleared and pulled a wheely-table from the corner and readied herself for them to lift him.  
  
Rimmer nodded and laughed quietly. Smart. Intuitive. Quick off the mark. JUST the kind of personality he craved, especially having spent the last three-million and five years with a slob, neurotic droid, sickeningly vein feline and a mainframe with the IQ and conversational skills of a traffic warden with one GCSE...in PE. Sure, she twitched and stuttered occasionally, but he put that down to sheer cuteness. And sure, she seemed quite interested in him. He put that down to the twitching and stuttering. No one is perfect. He of all people should know that.  
  
They gathered their strength, struggled and battled with Lister's mass, until finally, they managed him onto the make-shift stretcher and began to make their way down the corridor, both pushing from behind. Not even them accidentally letting him roll down a ramp before crashing into a wall could bring Lister round.  
  
There was an uncomfortable silence between the 'paramedics'. Neither could think of anything to say to one another. Eventually, Rimmer turned to Bexlie.  
  
".....So....." He was never really a good conversationalist with women. Especially ones that were this pretty.  
  
"...How am I?" They both grinned as she finished his sentence for him. "I'm OK I g-guess... c-considering..." She gestured around the room. "You know..."  
  
"The strange ship with strange people you've randomly found yourself on? Don't worry... As long as you avoid making contact with Lister, The Cat, Kryten, and especially our half-witted mainframe computer Holly... I'm sure you'll be perfectly fine." He flashed his special authoritative, 'seductive' smile.  
  
Bexlie knew exactly where this was going. Obviously they were going to the medi-bay... but conversation-wise.  
  
On looking into Arn's eyes, and even having just met the ex-man, all she could focus on was the shimmering golden highlights in the ocean of dreamy, earthy hazel. The way his iris would get darker and deeper, the further out to the edge you looked...the desire in his deep, ebony, satin-like pupils. The sparkling 'H' branded on his forehead, akin to her own...his coiling, chestnut-coloured hair (which still happened to be doused in curry, but cute all the same.)... the ever so slight stubble he donned on his sleep- deprived jaw-line..  
  
She had never seen a male hologram before... Hell, she'd never met a man before who wasn't all over her mother instead of her. After all those years alone, she completely overlooked the fact that he was someone who was a complete smeghead, someone nobody ever liked, and someone who was covered in curry. This was nice, she thought. She twitched accordingly.  
  
He felt exactly the same. Each of her eyes were a copious nebula of blues, purples, greens and silvers and were teeming with beauty and emotion. Her Bambi-brown, shining flow of hair cascaded down her back, and seemed to have no end. He longed for the chance to run his fingers through it. This was enough to blow his light-bee into a billion love-stricken pieces. This wasn't just another "Ooh she's pretty...I'll have her!" kind of circumstance.  
  
Of course he hadn't seen, let alone talked to a female since Red Dwarf was teeming with them... but even then, none of them actually wanted to talk to him of their own free will. This was nice, he thought. And better still, she was a hologram. They obviously had LOADS in common.  
  
They sighed together. Each beautiful, gormlessly lustful set of eyes still fixated with the other. The situation was simple in his mind.  
  
"...This might just be..."  
  
"Ughhh...Arrrrrrr...."  
  
The pair snapped from their desperate ecstasy immediately. Lister was coming round... and they hadn't even got to the medi-bay yet! They flashed a slightly irritated and hungered smile at each other before speeding off down the hallways and lifts like rabbits from a dog-track. 


	3. Tubes and Tantrums

***  
Chapter 3  
  
A while later...  
  
"Bleep. Bleep. Bleep." Kryten stood, linked to the pulse-machine. "Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep."  
  
The Cat stared in mild amusement. The bleepy-thing had previously packed in, following getting knocked over from a couple of weeks back... by him, naturally. Now Kryten stood as a replacement. His groinal socket had proved useful yet again. Lister lay on the steel table, tubes and pipes stuffed down his throat, up his nose - he didn't particularly need them he HAD only fainted after all... but the Cat had insisted. Having Lister swallowing Kryten's multi-use genitalia was enough to make anyone cease preening and watch.  
  
"Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir...CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" Kryten bellowed, as Bexlie, Rimmer and the Cat shielded their eardrums.  
  
Lister woke with a start. And a headache. "Aye, man... me ears!" he massaged his temples and looked around, almost instantly clocking the woman who had done this to him.  
  
Bexlie was coaxed gently by Rimmer, as she stood forward, tensely and rigidly. She took Lister's hand, and in a stuttering whisper, she introduced herself to him.  
  
"Hel-l-lo. David Lister... I'm B-b-be-"  
  
"Hold on, I've got tubes down me -" He paused. "Wait a smeggin' minute! Kryt, I thought the bleeper had packed in?"  
  
Kryten explained the tube situation...Lister spat them out immediately. "Ugh..."  
  
She carried on. "D-dave Lister... My n-n-name is Bexlie. I'm your d- daughter."  
  
He couldn't comprehend what this strange, stuttering girl had just said to him. The only person related to him with the name Bexlie was Bexley, his son. Not daughter. Son! Maybe this was all just the concussion speaking? He didn't know. He knew for a fact that his son was a son. His two sons were sons. Twins. Of course he would know, because he went through the agony of childbirth for them. They were MALE. No doubt about it. Or was there? And what about Jim, Bexley's twin? Where was he?  
  
She picked up on what he was about to say. "Why am I a g-girl? Dad...you nnn-never changed me once! What was there to det-termine whether I was a b- boy or not?! Plus, the act of c-crossing us through the Parallels ob-bvious- sly had an effect on us!  
  
"Yeah," Smirked the ever-tactful Cat. "In m-m-m-more ways than one!"  
  
She ignored his petty remark and carried on.  
  
"...Well, we were boys on your side right, girls on the other! And what about Jim? Jim is called Jane."  
  
"Wait a god-damned minute," The Cat interrupted after a thoughtful silence. "You mean to say, that in all probability... when you crossed the Parallel Dimension, you and this Jim-aney character had - a sex change?" He stood in amusement. "As babies? Is that LEGAL?!"  
  
She shot a witheringly annoyed glare at the animal, and he cowered behind Kryten. "Sorry...Madam...do excuse my manners, and DO please, carry on..." He exclaimed in his most posh of voices.  
  
She continued. "And, I'm sorry Father, but you may well have to sit down for this..."  
  
Lister gestured at the table he was lying on, shook his head and sighed. "What about Jane then? How is she? Is she OK? Where is she?!" Lister was becoming steadily irate.  
  
She explained to him that Jane had gone on to become the first female test pilot for the Space Corps, but after many years, had sadly tested one short- circuited ship too many.  
  
"She's dead. Took on a wall at twenty-five-thousand-odd miles an hour. Couldn't brake - as the company later found out, they'd forgot to install brakes... I'm sorry. I vowed to find you after it happened, and although, at the time you left us, the barriers between yours and Mum's Universes had a strange effect on our life cycles, the barrier has steadily broken down over the years... Only now has it been safe enough for me to get through to you. Jane has been dead for years. And although I am too, her light-bee was destroyed after an electricity leakage. Exploded. There is no way to fix it. She's gone. Forever." Tears welled up around the rims of her eyelids. He squeezed her hand, before again, passing out. It was all too much to take in. Way too much.  
  
"Miss Lister Ma'am? Are you ok? Mister Lister Sir?" Kryten didn't quite know what to make of the whole affair.  
  
Neither did The Cat.  
  
Neither did Rimmer. Almost reluctantly, he stepped forward and embraced her gently, lightly pressing her face to his chest. Her eyes were streaming. Even her tears were beautiful, he mused. The 'Whole Affair' had now seemed a hell of a lot more than simple now. She was Bexlie Lister. She was a blood-relation (well, not technically a blood-relation now she was a hologram) of the scum of the earth, and he...well...he was...he was in love with her. A LISTER. He rolled his hazel eyes into his head, shut them tightly and groaned softly along with her as she wept.  
  
Cat had had enough of all the solemnity. He stood up and casually made his way to the nearby sink, filled a glass of water, casually made his way back, stood beside Lister and poured the H2O right over his face.  
  
Lister screeched.  
  
"Now... that should bring him round." He grinned insensitively as he made his way yet again, down the hall to his quarters.  
  
"It's three-and-a-half minutes past shower time.. five hours past beauty time... and twelve hours past mirror time! I'm behind schedule!! Miiiaaooooooowwwww!" His screeching echoed down the hallway as he strutted.  
  
"Oh Daddy," Bexlie began sympathetically. "I..I mean...I really didn't mean to shock you so much. I had to find you. You would have found out eventually, I guess."  
  
"You guess?! And...don't call me daddy. I'm not your daddy. How could I be? I haven't talked to you in.... however many years I haven't seen you -"  
  
She adamantly corrected him. "Twenty years."  
  
Kryten and Holly let themselves out. This was becoming slightly too personal to listen to.  
  
Rimmer stayed on the same spot grinning excessively behind his dumbfounded expression. Twenty years? He mulled it over, letting her words roll around in his skull for a couple of seconds. Twenty? That was HALF his age! She was twenty whole years his minor, and was definitely interested in HIM.  
  
"Mmmarvellous!" Rimmer exclaimed, rather loudly, out loud. His resonant thought was greeted by two glares from each Lister. He backtracked.  
  
"Sorry... just, well, erm..."  
  
And with that immensely detailed explanation, he too let himself out. Quickly. Bexlie smiled after him as he very nearly, in all his rush, walked into the door.  
  
She mopped her Father's brow. He lay, staring at her, still ill content with the revelations. She didn't even look like him. The accent was off. And from what he could see... she was smarter than him too. How could an offspring of his actually be smarter? Maybe it was because she didn't actually ever properly TALK with him growing up. Maybe because she lived in a parallel universe, The Listers were intelligent. Despite having so many already answered, questions still swarmed like a plague of locusts around his mind, munching ceaselessly at his brain.  
  
"What's with your accent then? And WHY don't you look like me?!" he barked.  
  
She sighed heavily as she explained that, because she never really had a paternal figure around back home, her Mother had found someone else. A guy called Kristopher Kochanski. Because he was a high-ranking officer on Red Dwarf before the minor-apocalypse, he was very educated, prim, proper. Bexlie had found refuge in conversation with him. Her mother was too busy eating Vindaloos and insulting Arlene Rimmer to educate her, let alone talk with her even occasionally. She would spend around ten hours a day just talking with him, about the stars, life on board Red Dwarf, her problems, everything. And THAT was where Bexlie's accent derived. Not the harsh Liverpudlian twang of her lowly mother, but the soft, velvety Scottish tones of Kristopher. Arlene, the ship's hologram, was also a strong influence on Bexlie's life. Her relentless teachings on Hammond Organ music and Twentieth Century telegraph poles, not to mention her lessons in saluting a superior officer were simply priceless. She just generally enjoyed her company. Because Arlene was really the only female idol she had on the ship, Bexlie was completely and utterly crushed when she had to leave to become Ace Rimmer. However, on a recent visit from her hero Ace, she was taught all about the Dimension Jump Drive. How there are many coexisting Listers, Kochanskis, Rimmers, Hollys, and how each of their dimensions had differences - and of course, how her mother was also her father, and how her father WAS her mother...in retrospect.  
  
And with that, Bexlie began to piece together everything missing in her life that Kochanski had probably accidentally omitted to fill her in on.  
  
Then, she only had one goal. Find her biological father.  
  
Now, she had found him.  
  
On hearing his daughter's tale, Lister also, began piecing things together.  
  
"Kochanski? Kristopher Kochanski? HE made a better Mother than me?" he perished the thought.  
  
"And RIMMER?! How could you get along with Rimmer?! That one in YOUR universe is just ours with a rack!" guffawed Lister. "And judging by what this one's been blessed with - " In his mind, he looked Rimmer up and down. "They're not exactly going to be that special."  
  
"I hoped you would be nothing like our Lister, but that slither of hope is disintegrating faster than her taste buds," she defensively quipped back.  
  
Bexlie was slowly but surely becoming quite upset with her long-waited for find. She'd travelled all this way just to find her dysfunctional mother in a man's body. Just her Mother, but with obvious extra bodily functions, worse body odour and a fifty-percent lower IQ level. Great, she thought to herself. "Just great."  
  
"Well... didn't exactly thrill me when you turned up, finding out I only had one twin left, she's a She, doesn't look or sound like me, and was brought up by a heartbreaker and a Morris-dancing, girlier version of the most disgustingly irritating man dead!" Lister recklessly declared. "He's a complete SMEGHEAD! Our Rimmer is, your Rimmer is... everybody's Rimmer is!!"  
  
That was the last straw. She gasped with disgust and stormed out the door. On her way out, she stormed gale-force one into the chest of the quite- blatantly spying Arnold Rimmer. He smiled calmly at her saddened, but mostly angered demeanour.  
  
He may have been spying intently, but Rimmer also had found the time to wash his hands and finally persuade Holly to fix him a new outfit. He had a new haircut. A less gawky, blotchy complexion. And, a much firmer and toned body. Quite obviously, he had taken the time out enough to revamp his whole look. Bexlie let out a lungful of air. Was this the Arnold J Rimmer, BSc SSc she had met some hours previously? Or was this some film-hunk from a kick-ass action film?  
  
"Howdy doodly doo!"  
  
"...Rimmer." She ultimately decided.  
  
"What's wrong Bexlie darling dearest?" He cooed. She thrust her head angrily onto his shoulder. With a pained expression, he stroked her face and hair as she explained how much of a complete and total smegger her father really was.  
  
"I know, I know" was the synthetically sympathetic reply.  
  
Then she looked him in the eyes. An idea had struck her like a whip on the face - you couldn't miss it. She grinned naughtily, gripped Rimmer's tie tightly in her hands and pulled him forcibly round the corner into the medi- bay. Arn was obligated to follow suit, like a small Daschund on a leash, idiotically smiling after her.  
  
Lister was perched on the edge of the medi-table. He looked up at his daughter and bunk-mate in the doorway.  
  
"Dad... you said you hated Rimmer?" Bexlie asked.  
  
"Hate isn't strong enough a word darling..." Lister retorted sarcastically, eyeing Rimmer up and down again with disgust.  
  
"Well...You know what Dad - " Bexlie begun, and she tugged a genuinely shocked Rimmer into a kiss. He immediately fell into it... but just before he could get his tongue in properly for a little dance, she pulled away, glared at her Father, grabbed the hand of the panic-stricken, love-craving hologram and waltzed off with him up the corridor to the lifts.  
  
"Geronimoooooo!!!" Came the Rimmer-esque cries from down the hall as they began to run.  
  
Bexlie had hit on her desired effect. Lister was livid. HOW could Rimmer take advantage of his daughter like that?!  
  
"He's old enough to be her DAD!!" he roared, as he vaulted from the table, tripped over some of Kryten's groinal wiring and went speeding off after them.  
  
His face, now puce, veins pulsing like pistons, roared as he powered down the halls - tables, cans, chairs, Skutters, Cats and Krytens flying out of his way as he strode.  
  
"Maybe we should stop him...?" enquired Kryten, rather flustered as the Lister shaped blur thrust it's way past.  
  
"I'm smeggin' gonna smeggin' smeggin' knock his smeggin' ugly smeggin' features off his smeggin' face!!!!"  
  
The Cat stared as Lister flew by. Then at Kryten. "Nah...." he replied eventually. 


	4. Lifted To Safety

***  
Chapter 4  
  
"Ruuuuunnnn....c'mon! c'mon!!" Bexlie gripped the now wheezing and gasping Rimmer. She grinned widely, on looking at his exhausted face. They were headed for the lifts, and Lister's thumps and roars were echoing like an avalanche from the top of the corridors. BOOM!! BOOM!! RRAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!  
  
Rimmer was not only exhausted now... he was petrified! Of Dave Lister! The only man he knew with a ponytail, which bore ribbons. But he had one, very good reason. He was going to kill him! Again!  
  
His new love was giggling hysterically with the sheer excitement and adrenaline... getting ready to take Rimmer with her a step further off the plank into infinity.  
  
"PING! Doors opening..."  
  
As they reached the further side of the lift-doors, she gazed into the eyes she adored so much and began to snigger wildly.  
  
"But...b..b..b..BUT!" his stutter was sparked off as she began purring and unbuttoning his Second-technician's shirt.  
  
"But we...we....*MURH*!" His sentence was muted by her perfectly lip-lined mouth. "Oh... okay..." he murmered as she pinned him to the wall. She pressed the button marked 'TOP' with her flailing arm.  
  
The roars were still bouncing from every wall in the ship... MMMYYY!!! DAUGHTTEERRR!!!!!!! Lister was right at the lift door. "Bastard!" he blasted, and lunged to maul Rimmer, his eyes blazing red...  
  
"PING!! Doors closing..." was the sedate reply from the lift. Lister's face was cut from view by the massive steel doors. Usually, at this point in time, Rimmer would have either collapsed, or he would have laughed hysterically with the fear, but he had things to do... Bexlie simpered eagerly as he ran his fingers through her hair...  
  
"Slam!" 


	5. Shoulders, Soft Light & Sedatives

***  
Chapter 5  
  
"A sedative... sir?" Kryten had no other options. Simply talking to Lister had done nothing to relieve the problem... more...well... anger the situation further.  
  
"Would you like a curry...to calm you nerves?" he had previously asked. But the curry just reminded Lister of the smeg-for-brains that was covered in it that morning.  
  
Even offering Lister a shoulder to cry on didn't help... Both Rimmer AND his estranged 'daughter'- they had shoulders.  
  
"Awritey there Listy...?" Holly had re-appeared from whatever he had been away for so long doing, utterly oblivious to the goings-on of that particular morning. That was it. Rimmer called him 'Listy'. He growled and sprung for the screen towards a rather suprised Holly.  
  
"You startin' sumthin' Hol?!" Lister was uncontrollable. "Nooooowwww!!!!" Screeched the Cat.  
  
"PING!! Doors opening...." the 'holo-lovers' had reached the cabin- bays...finally.  
  
Lister sniffed the air and leered, natively. "There here...."  
  
And with that particular thought... Rimmer and Bexlie - hair everywhere and with content expressions on each of their faces - sauntered lovingly through into the room. Rimmer caught sight of Lister immediately. Lister simply started for him...bloodshot eyes widened, veins a-pumping.  
  
"Holly...? Soft light please... soft light... soft light...." Lister was becoming ever closer to the trembling Rimmer, grinning psychotically as he strode. He swung for him. "SOFT LIGHT HOLLYYYYY!!!"  
  
Lister's clenched fist swiped through the hologram.  
  
Kryten lunged at Lister's neck, with meticulously close timing.  
  
'Psssst!' ....went the syringe. 'Thump!' ...went Lister. Again.  
  
Holly was rather concerned by this point. When he saw him that morning, Lister was out-cold. When he saw him LATER that morning, he was out-cold again. And now... yes NOW... he needed a sedative?! 


	6. Ignorance Is Bliss, Listy

***  
Chapter 6  
  
The Cat was becoming bored with the constant limelight-snatching from Lister.  
  
"Bored. Bored Bored Bored!!!" Cat groaned, moaned, screeched and sighed. Kryten felt very uncomfortable. How could he do that to Lister?! ASSAULT him like he did?!  
  
"Well, unscrew my groinal box and spin my nipple nuts!!!!" Kryten whined hysterically as he paced rapidly to and fro. "...what in the good name of Silicon Heaven has been going on?! Just one female humanoid on the ship... just a teeny small one... and she's caused more trouble than an entire field of bulls and red-cloaked hooligans."  
  
As Kryten continued to wear a dent in the deck, he was watched over by Bexlie and Rimmer. Each had become increasingly discomforted by Lister's motions towards them, and so with great heart-rending pain, they had come to the conclusion that being apart would keep them from being torn apart, literally, as well as emotionally. Her father was what she had been searching for all these years, and despite the fact he was a self-centered, lager-swilling, curry slurping slob with all the etiquette of a an alcoholic gorilla, she ultimately decided that he was the one that would have to matter for the moment. Even though it pained both herself and her beloved hologram deeply...  
  
As her father came round for the umpteenth time, Kryten, Holly, Cat, Bexlie and Rimmer simultaneously explained that nothing had ever gone on between his best friend and his daughter and that he'd dreamt the whole thing throughout his miniature coma. Sleepily, he took it as the truth and nothing more was said about the dangerous liasons from that point on. 


	7. The Love of a Deathtime

***  
Chapter 7  
  
Lister had steadily grown to enjoy his new found daughter's company. They would stay up late, talking the night away with all of their stories, experiences and tales of adventures, romances and near-death circumstances... as Rimmer watched discontentedly from the wide berth she and her unknowing father had forced him to acquire. Just gazing upon her glorious beauty, those blue nebulae and the never-ending eyelashes, the golden waterfall that caressed her shoulders and back. Those images thrashed about and tugged so roughly at his heartstrings he was sure they would inevitably tear if he were to keep his jarring distance for much longer. The deeply corrosive agony he suffered from not being near her, not being able to thread his fingers aimlessly through her gold-spun locks, and never having the chance to stare as deeply as he once had into the eyes he adored destroyed him.  
  
Truth was, to begin with, he really just wanted her. She WAS female, she WAS interested after all! And now his second chance at bliss was gone. Now, he realised, he really didn't just want her. She wasn't just for Christmas, she was for life.  
  
He lay for hours in his blistering depression, whiling away the hours, days and weeks as Bexlie grew ever closer to her Father. The fading memories of her touch mercilessly attacking his train of thought. He wanted to just die. Again.  
  
And no one noticed. No one cared about the deathly torture he had been subjected to. No one even bothered to even glance at his exhaustedly grey features, glimmering distressingly with icy tears. They were constantly being wiped away by his white-knuckled fists, which shook endlessly with a tragic tremor. He had been destroyed inside.  
  
"No one cares..."  
  
He had pined endlessly for love for his whole lifetime, and deathtime. He longed deeply for someone to care for him as Yvonne McGruder once had, someone who could diminish his loneliness and frustration and shelter him with the love and compassion he so desperately needed. He had found all of his dreams were reiterated in Bexlie, as soon as he clapped eyes on her. He knew then, she was 'the one'. He knew now, she could never be his. He wallowed in self-pity for weeks on end, never leaving his bunk, drowning in his tear-sodden pillow.  
  
Although Bexlie had enjoyed her Father's company immensely throughout her stay, she was consistently niggled at by something at the back of her mind. Sure, finding her Dad was simply fantastic, but there was another void that required filling.  
  
At night, she would wander aimlessly around the ship she had become used to, trying in vain to stop herself taking up the challenge her heart had set her.  
  
"No," her mind wailed. "I can't destroy my Father's happiness..."  
  
But nor could she destroy her own. What could she possibly do about it? She knew deep inside that her choice was slowly destroying Rimmer, much to the delight of his crewmates, especially the Cat, who found this more entertaining that watching a dog run at high speed into a wall with sharp spikes stuck on. This was far more entertaining that just merely seeing Rimmer get pounded by Lister.  
  
"Hell no," he would snigger. "Internal agony is farrrr funnier! Specially when it's toilet brush head!!"  
  
She wanted to punch the self-interested moggie, square in the fangs there and then, but she refrained. She had come up with an idea far in advanced of her previous efforts...  
  
She 'couldn't destroy her Father's happiness'?  
  
"....why not?" 


	8. The Birth of a Dark Bee

***  
Chapter 8  
  
"Stasis! My Dad spent three million years in stasis... what difference would a couple of weeks do? He would never know about us then! Of course, Kryten and the Cat would also have to go... Holly would have to be switched off, just incase he tells..."  
  
But she couldn't do that! That was just selfish. She couldn't just get rid of her Father, Kryten, The Cat and Holly when and where she wanted to! As she walked, pondering in great detail as to how she could possibly overcome her problems, she felt a sharp, unforgiving slashing pain in her chest. She gripped it tightly, screeching a blood-curdling scream, eyes rolling back into her head, the world spinning like a deranged merry-go-round around her, her face and body draining any colour it had once had. She collapsed. Something festering at the back of her mind was ravaging its way to the front of her conscious mind. Thunderbolts of hate sparked and sliced her hologrammatic body. She lay on the corridor floor, cold and motionless. She wasn't dead, but a strange calm caressed over her body like a train of silk.  
  
It only seemed a matter of seconds before her agonising ordeal was over, and she scrambled and clawed herself back to her shaky feet. The pain had gone. She even felt stronger and more powerful than she ever had before...  
  
She grinned a new, evil grin. Her light-bee was corrupted. The small blue- green oceans that had once been the centre point and outlet of her clean, sparkling demure were now engulfed and drowning in flames, bright and brilliant reds. Her once angelic soul was now an inferno of hate and power. The old Bexlie had suffocated in this pent-up darkness. She didn't want love anymore. She didn't need it. She wanted revenge.  
  
She was going to take over Red Dwarf. No one was going to be able to stop her.  
  
Maybe all those years spent chasing her Father, with no voice to comfort her but her own had got to her, she couldn't tell, but now she was going to make up for all those years of torment he had obliviously put her through. She was going to offload that torment into Rimmer, the man who would lay down his life (if he had one) for her.  
  
"...Perfect." 


End file.
